THE BIG FOR SONG CHALLENGE SERIES - Matchup 174

Anthrax "Monster At The End" (2016) VS Megadeth "Death From Within" (2016) VS Metallica "Moth Into Flame" (2016) VS Slayer "Delusions Of Saviour" (2015)

I gotta give "Monster At The End" ups for getting to the point, especially after "You Gotta Believe" tried to get us to believe it was deep by cramming two different songs together.  I gotta take away a few for naming the song after a book by Grover from Sesame Street, but eh.  And that's all I can really say.  "Eh."  It's not a bad song; it's well put together, but...it doesn't leave much of an impression.  It has energy, but that's not enough to make it interesting.

"Death From Within" has the unfortunate metal trope of the dun du-du-du-du-Dun war drum-inspired thrash march beat (which I've never liked), but they manage to still make a distinct enough song out of it that they are able to overcome this shortcoming.  The lead work and chorus especially elevate it above the hum drum framework on which it is constructed.

At the time "Moth Into Flame" came out (two and a half months ago, for the record) I remarked "If the rest of the album is this good or better, Hardwired'll be the album of the year."  Well, two things: a) The rest of Hardwired is a lot more mid-paced and b) I think I might like "Atlas, Rise!" better.  Which is weird, because my first impression of that song is that I thought it sounded like a lesser version of "Moth Into Flame".  Okay, I think I've got it.  I like "Moth Into Flame" better in a vacuum, but on the album the two songs are too close together (this should've started disc 2).  If you've never heard either song before you listen to the album, this is going to sound like the less necessary of the two because you heard it 2nd.  I mean, it's better than "Monster At The End" and marginally better than "Death From Within", and at the end of the day, that's what we're here to factor in.  Let's see what Slayer counters with:

The intro to "Repentless".  Hmmm.  Tough break, Slayer.  To be fair, this is better than Anthrax's intro track "Impaled", but again, it had to beat what it was matched against, and them's the breaks.

"Moth Into Flame": 4
"Death From Within": 3
"Monster At The End": 2
"Delusions Of Saviour": 1

UPDATE TOTALS:

Metallica: 14
Megadeth: 12
Anthrax: 9
Slayer: 5

ALL TIME TOTALS:

Anthrax: 447
Metallica: 440
Slayer: 436
Megadeth: 399

Come back tomorrow for the next installment!

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